20 Expert Photography Tips

Back at Your Mac

Post-production tips for more professional photo and video projects

12. Tighten Your Edits

When you’re sequencing video clips in iMovie, it’s tempting to just drag the clips in the order you’d like the shots to appear. Doing that gets you a finished video, but it doesn’t necessarily give you a polished one.

There are 16 frames at the end of this shot that we don’t need—that’s about a half-second of awkwardness.

Look at each shot in the sequence. Is it too long? Shorten it. Does it have just a half-second of unwanted sound or video at the beginning or end? Trim the unwanted part. Good directors don’t just slap one shot after another. They make sure each shot starts and ends at the right time.

13. Switch to Gamma 2.2

The gamma setting controls the overall contrast in a display. It used to be that there was a Windows standard gamma (2.2, which about matches the gamma of a CRT) and a Mac standard gamma (1.8). Some images created on one platform would often look too bright or too dark on the other as a result.

When Mac OS 10.6 came out, Apple decided that the Mac ought to be on the 2.2 gamma standard, just like Windows. The sRGB color space, which defines a range of colors, has a gamma of roughly 2.2. The Worldwide Web Consortium has standardized on sRGB. Not everybody has a web browser that corrects for gamma before displaying an image.

You really want to be at gamma 2.2, unless you have a color management expert telling you otherwise.

Simply put, if you want the most people on the internet to be able to see your images the way you see them, you should be in gamma 2.2. In fact, Apple’s advice to Aperture users (at support.apple.com/kb/HT2026) is, “Unless you have a color management expert instructing you otherwise, select a 2.2 gamma and a D65 white point.” It’s worth a trip to the Color tab in System Preferences > Displays to check whether you’re on gamma 2.2. Click the Calibrate button and advance to the step for determining the target gamma to make sure it’s set to 2.2.

14. Vector-Based Images Scale Better

If you plan to use some sort of logo or graphic across multiple projects (a website, a photo gallery, a DVD menu, and so on), it helps to have a vector-based version of the graphic. Vector art tends to scale larger without any loss of quality, unlike graphics that are stored as pixels. Common vector art file types you may encounter include Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), Adobe Illustrator (AI), or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS). If you have a graphic made of pixels (such as a GIF, JPEG, or PNG), and you want to run it larger than actual size, it’ll look pixelated.

The Mac|Life logo was created in Adobe Illustrator. The light blue lines and handles represent the vectors that make up the logo, making it easy to scale as large or small as we like.

15. Working with Lossy Compression

Images take up a lot of memory, gobs of it. That’s why programmers have come up with ways to compress the images, so they’ll take less space and transmit more quickly. Digital-camera makers love JPEG compression, which is characterized as a “lossy” compression format. Simply put, the way JPEG makes an image smaller is by making an intelligent guess about how much of the image it can discard. You’d be surprised by how much you can throw out from an image before anyone notices.

Adobe Photoshop gives you various options when saving JPEG files. Decide which quality setting works for you. Setting it to 5 makes medium-sized files.

Many cameras let you choose how aggressively the built-in image processor compresses the images. Less compression potentially leaves more detail in the photo, which is great if you plan to work on the image later on your Mac. Most software lets you choose how much you want to compress a JPEG image, too. Try not to get too aggressive, though: it’s when the algorithm tosses out too much that you start to see unwanted changes, called artifacts, on an image.

16. Rulers Are Better Than Eyeballs

If you use well-designed templates, such as the book templates in iPhoto, you don’t have to worry much about alignment because someone else already thought of that. But if you’re laying out images and text on your own for the first time, you may be tempted to use your eyeballs to align things. It’s a bad habit to get into.

The light-blue lines are guides that we placed precisely along the rulers. They don’t appear on the document, but they help us align the text layers for precise spacing and centering.

Your software may display rulers along the top and side of a document. It may also let you place (non-printing) guides onto a document to help you align things. Use them to make sure everything’s really lined up. The programmers gave you these tools. Use them for better documents.

17. Contrast Increases Legibility

Think of the last book you held in your hand. Chances are, the color of the paper was off-white (or yellow, if it was older). The words in the book probably were black, which stood out nicely from the background. The publisher didn’t print the words in a lighter color because it would be harder to read against the lighter-colored background.

You’re already covered if you use iPhoto’s templates: changing the background color behind text results in a corresponding change to the text itself. It won’t let you make the text blend in with its background.

The gray letters over the dark red plastic tub are legible, but they don’t stand out as well as the blue letters.

But if you’d rather do it yourself by adding type to an image or some other design project, consider what will be behind the text and how it will affect people’s ability to read it. If the background is dark, use light letters. If the background is light, use dark letters. You can also try using drop shadows or outlines to make the text more legible.

18. More Fonts Aren’t Always Better

You may have hundreds of fonts at your disposal, but that doesn’t mean you should use all of them in the same project. Using just a handful of carefully chosen fonts gives you a better result than if you’d used 20 on the same page. Consider also what your font communicates when you use it. It’s probably not the best idea to use Comic Sans on a program for a funeral.

One or two fonts would be OK in this design. But four fonts for four words? Yuck.

Designers can become emotional about fonts. Some think Arial is a fake, inferior version of Helvetica; some say Papyrus is overused. While not everybody thinks some fonts are gauche, most people think too many fonts are a chore to read. Two or three is plenty.

19. Spot Color vs. Process Color

Most people don’t have to think of this because printing is so easy. But if you’re working with a printing company on a brochure, photo book, or other complex printing project, it can be helpful to know the difference between spot color and process color.

Process color usually blends cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks to make a colorful image. That’s four inks. It works well for photos, but doesn’t do as well on pure, solid colors.

Spot color prints a specific color onto the page. By working with fewer than four colors of ink, you may save some money over process color, and you may choose a color that can’t be made with process printing. You can also use metallic or pastel inks. But you can’t do a photo this way.

If you know you want both a specific solid color and a photo on the same project, talk to your printing company about adding spot color to the print job, then open your checkbook.

20. Master ColorSync

Working with color can be a challenge on any platform because different output devices can reproduce a differing range of colors. Apple solves this problem with ColorSync color management software. The color characteristics of each device are described in files called color profiles. ColorSync Utility lets you view and edit the profiles. When you connect a printer, scanner, or digital camera, ColorSync automatically assigns a profile.

The last time we provided images for a big print job, we set up Photoshop using Edit > Color Settings, the way the prepress technicians asked us to.

If you’re working with a commercial printer, ask them how to set up ColorSync or your applications to match their press. They may give you a file ending in .icc, which is the color profile of their press. Put it into Library/ColorSync/Profiles to make it available to your applications, or follow their instructions.

Aperture uses “Onscreen Proofing,” which is configured with View > Proofing Profile and activated by View > Onscreen Proofing. We’ve now set up both to use the ColorSync profile called “newpress.”

Comment

Do not hold your camera the way the lady does in the very first picture. While it is good for a photo shoot, If your camera has an eyepiece, use it. It stabilizes the camera, and makes it easier to brace against your body. Also, it makes sports or other rapid photography faster and easier, as it is point, zoom to what you want, snap, rather than line up, squint at screen, readjust, and possibly get a blurry picture.

One neat thing I have found is that if you match the zoom to close to the distance your eyes see, it makes it easier to shoot sports or other photos that need fast reflexes, as you can open your other eye, and see all of the action, rather than just your photo.

The rest of the tips are great, just wanted to put in a tip about camera handling.

On a related note, this is my only gripe about EVIL cameras: no eyepiece. Beyond that, they look really cool.